Idsall School

Parents

Contact with Parents

Communication with parents is important to us as we believe that the education of our children is essentially a partnership. Letters are sent home and emailed to parents during the year to keep you informed about what is going on at school. These are also posted on this site, together with other news and information about school activities and also in the termly published "Idsall Voice" newsletter. Learning Managers and Subject Leaders may also write from time to time. Please look out for all of these - they sometimes only turn up at the end of term along with the stale sandwiches at the bottom of the school bag. Important letters usually carry a response slip. We are grateful when parents return these so that we know that the message has been received. We will normally send you a personal letter by post if we have concerns about your child’s standard of work, progress or behaviour. It is usually helpful if you respond to this with a phone call or visit so that we can sort out the problem as quickly as possible.

Parents' Evenings

Each year group has one formal Parents' Evening during the course of the school year, although parents are always welcome to come to school at other times to talk about areas of concern. The School uses an on-line appointment booking system for Parents’ Evenings whereby parents are able to choose their own appointment times from any internet connected device. The system has been set up to allow as many parents to see the teachers they wish by allowing a maximum of 6 appointments. In order for this to work efficiently we recommend you make appointments for members of staff where you have a particular concern or question regarding your child’s progress. Owing to pressure of numbers we have to limit interviews at Parents’ Evenings to five minutes with each teacher for years 7 to 11. The web is address https://idsallschool.parentseveningsystem.co.uk.

Reporting on Student Progress

We provide parents with their child's progress and assessment information three times per year. It enables parents to get closer to and support their child’s learning, enabling them to work with teachers as partners in improving learning outcomes for their child. We are keen to begin emailing these reports directly to parents as a PDF rather than sending by post so it is important parents let us know about any changes in email address.

Homework

Here at Idsall we have been providing students and parents with an online system for viewing homework for many years via our iSchool portal. This has provided parents with an insight into how much and what type of homework their child receives. More importantly, it has been helping students to keep on top of their workload and access school resources from home. Following feedback from parents, we have now moved to an alternative website and now subscribe to SHOW MY HOMEWORK which provides greater functionality including a mobile device app with push notifications whereby students and parents can automatically receive an alert. Please see our Show My Homework page.

Idsall School is a charity and a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales with company number 08976748 whose registered office is at Idsall School, Coppice Green Lane, Shifnal, Shropshire, TF11 8PD